Theft of patient files spurs Bernalillo County jury to award millions to local doctor

A Bernalillo County jury awarded a local optometrist a chunk of change last week — $2.3 million plus one dollar to be exact — finding that the doctor’s former employer, a national chain called Eyeglass World, had stolen the customer base built up by the doctor over a decade.

And while the jury focused on the theft of the doctor’s property, left unaddressed by the jury is whether the company’s actions violated federal rules concerning doctor-patient confidentiality.

Eyeglass World is not, in and of itself, a licensed optometrist, so wasn’t supposed to handle the patient files of it’s contracted optometrist, Dr. Willis Muncey, without his express consent. Those files are legally supposed to be confidential documents that belong to the optometrist. But that didn’t stop the company from copying Dr. Muncey’s approximately 20,000 patient files back in the spring of 2007, without his permission.

According to Muncey’s attorney, Christopher Bauman of the firm Bauman, Dow & León, the doctor informed his employer that he was leaving the company, and then agreed to continue to provide coverage for one month while the company found his replacement. In order to do that, he contracted with several other optometrists to use his patient files at the Eyeglass World store during that interim period.

During that time, the company hired an outside company to copy the files without Muncey’s  permission.  When the doctor found out the company was doing that, his attorney advised him to not go back for the files.

“The value of the files resides in the exclusive control of the files,” Bauman explained in an interview with NMI. “Normally, it would be in the best interest of the company to purchase them from the doctor so he won’t open up shop across the street. And at one point, Eyeglass World offered to purchase the files for $300,000. But in the end, they stole them, paying an outside company $6,000 to copy them instead.”

After the copying was finished, the company demanded that Muncey come get his files. When he refused to do so, they asserted to the State Board of Optometry that he had abandoned the files. But after a five month investigation, that board dismissed the case and the doctor subsequently sued the company for stealing his files.

The company’s complaint to the Board of Optometry was an attempt to “ruin” his reputation, the doctor said in a prepared statement.

“The jury vindicated me from Eyeglass World’s attempts to steal my patient record and ruin my reputation after 36 years of practice, many of those years serving the Albuquerque community,” he said.

Bauman said while the court case didn’t explicitly take up the issue of patient confidentiality, the jury was clearly concerned about it.

“When they brought in the outside copiers, they violated patient confidentiality,” he said. “Think about what those files contain — social security numbers, confidential medical histories. While the judge rejected our attempt to introduce federal patient privacy rules as an issue in the case, the jury clearly recognized that issue, and felt strongly that Eyeglass World shouldn’t have copied the files.”

The jury awarded $300,000 in compensatory damages, which represent the market value of the files, and $2,000,001 in punitive damages.

“That extra dollar shows the jury thought it was very serious,” Bauman said. “It was their way of saying they would have awarded more if we’d asked for more.”

That’s still a lot, though. Bauman said commercial cases of this nature rarely see that kind of large punitive jury award.